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During the past few months, young Iraqis met each evening in a sparsely furnished building in Baghdad’s Karada neighborhood to ... rebrand their city from one of war to one of peace. Baghdad [is] the heart and soul of Iraq’s culture; cosmopolitan, diverse, and dynamic. The annual Baghdad City of Peace Carnival ... attended this year by more than 15,000 people, provided opportunities for some 500 young people to volunteer, collaborating across political, ethnic, and religious lines in an effort to show the positive side of Baghdad that they see. This year’s carnival included displays of paintings and handicrafts from local artists, readings of traditional poetry, performances by Iraqi and Western-style musicians, a book fair, free health checkups from medical students, and fundraising by local organizations. For Caesar Alwardii, the carnival is a second job. “I work from 8 to 4 every day, and then I come here,” he explains. “I spend more time on this than my actual job because this ... reminds people that there are things to be proud of and happy about in Baghdad.” Now the idea of the carnival may be spreading. “Our goal is that next year every province in Iraq, on one day, will have a Day of Peace,” he says. This year, the carnival took place on the heels of protests in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square. Noof Assi, one of the organizers of the carnival and a leader in the demonstrations ... sees [these events] as a sign of hope for a better future, especially as struggling Iraqis continue to flee to Europe.
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It is hard for T. A. Barron – a Colorado native, former Rhodes Scholar, and author of more than 30 highly acclaimed books – to pick the young hero that impresses him the most. They all inspire the veteran writer. In 2001, Barron founded The Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes, a program that strives to recognize and encourage the heroic efforts of young people and, as Barron describes it, “to spread the word about their examples as young heroes, so that other young people from all backgrounds will be inspired to do something themselves to make the world better.” In the 15 years since its founding, The Barron Prize has awarded more than $540,000 to some 364 young leaders. The honorees have come from 46 states, the District of Columbia, and Canada, and have collectively raised more than $15 million for their causes. “These kids are from every conceivable background,” Barron says, adding that their stories far outweigh any that he could pen. The latest batch of honorees will be announced Sept. 21, and will include Mary-Pat. Tired of attending more funerals than school graduations, she flew from Atlanta to Chicago, determined to receive help from Burrell Communications, one of the largest mutlicultural marketing firms in the world, for her “Think Twice” ad campaign against gun violence. Barron says he hopes the ever-growing list of prize winners will serve to inspire other young people.
Note: Don't miss the video of one of these inspiring teens available at the link above. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
The seven core assumptions are [a] set of beliefs [from the inspiring book] "Heart Of Hope." The first assumption is that the true self in everyone is good, wise and powerful. [The] second assumption is that the world is profoundly interconnected. You CANNOT disconnect. The third one is this idea that ... every one of us is born with a fundamental inclination to be in good relationship with others. No matter what happens to you or what you do, that's still there. That's a part of human nature. The fourth is, all humans have gifts. Everyone is needed for what they bring. Fifth, everything we need to make positive change is already here. We can find ways to access that together. Sixth, Human beings are holistic. You just cannot work [just] with the mind, or just with the body. Human beings have these other aspects, the emotional side, the spiritual side. When we are not paying attention to those, they always impact us sideways and we don't really understand what's going on. The seventh is this idea that in order to live from this core self that represents the best in us, we have to practice. All of these things build on each other and can become habits of how you show up in the world. But only if you practice.
Note: Listen to the complete 84 minute audio interview with prominent social justice advocate Kay Pranis at the link above.
Peter Sharp of Liberators International ... has created impromptu dance parties in the Perth CBD, he’s shocked shoppers by dancing through aisles at the supermarket and, most recently, he challenged notions of racism by staging an act in which a blindfolded Aboriginal girl stood on the beach with a sign asking for free hugs – and received them. In Spain, Pete would wander the streets of Barcelona. "Spain [had] just been smashed by the economic crisis. There’s so much negativity, uncertainty for the future. I thought what we could do is create positive actions in a public space that prove to people that we don’t need to feel this despair." Pete grabbed a bunch of his mates ... and welcomed a busload of tourists arriving in Barcelona as if they were celebrities. Next ... they started approaching people with biscuits and saying “How could you pay for this cookie without money?” At first confused, people soon started getting creative. Someone started singing opera for a cookie, others danced in the street. “It’s just astounding how much creativity is out there – every single moment of every single day if you create the platform for that to be expressed,” Pete says. If people were so willing to connect, to share love and joy when given the opportunity, perhaps there was no need for the distrust that permeates modern society. Perhaps, Pete pondered, we could rewire our brains to trust others, to connect with strangers, to spread love and kindness.
Note: Watch videos of Sharp's playful, inspiring work in action at the link above.
The Greek parliament on Wednesday overwhelmingly adopted a "humanitarian crisis" bill to help its poorest people, ignoring apparent pressure from the European Union to halt the legislation. Greek government coffers are almost empty and [anti-austerity Prime Minister Alexis] Tsipras needs further financial assistance for his country, but he also wants to enact social laws that break with the austerity imposed by international creditors since 2010 as a condition of the bailout. His government's refusal to fall into line with eurozone partners over its massive bailout has angered not only EU powerhouse Germany, but Spain and Portugal as well. The Greek legislation calls for households that were cut off because they could not pay their bills to be given a capped amount of free electricity. Up to 30,000 households would also get a housing allowance and 300,000 people would receive food subsidies. The legislation also includes help for people who have lost their jobs in recent months and no longer have social security coverage. "When all indicators are in the red like unemployment, poverty, etc, we do what is necessary to tackle these problems," Greek Labour Minister Panos Skourletis told lawmakers.
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The City-County Council on Monday voted largely along party lines to create a "Homeless Bill of Rights," making Indianapolis one of the first cities in the country to do so. The ordinance, modelled after similar laws in Rhode Island and Illinois, establishes specific protections for the homeless, a vulnerable population that advocates say face pervasive discrimination in their daily lives. Among the protections: the right to "move freely in public spaces," such as sidewalks and public buildings; the right to equal treatment by city agencies; the right to emergency medical care; and the right to a "reasonable expectation of privacy" for their personal property, just as someone would have inside a home. Notably, it ... requires the city to give a homeless person 15 days notice before displacing him or her from a camp. The city also would have to store displaced people's belongings for 60 days and connect them with nonprofits that would provide them with transitional housing and "wrap-around services," such as medical care and employment assistance. [City Councilman LeRoy] Robinson said such services are vital — and less costly than arresting people for minor offenses to get them off the streets. "It is much more cost-effective to provide support services and assistance to those experiencing homelessness in our city, than to arrest them," Robinson wrote in an email to The Star.
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The Southern California desert is now home to the world's largest solar power plant. U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell joined state officials on Monday to open the 550-megawatt Desert Sunlight solar project in the town of Desert Center, Calif., near Joshua Tree National Park. Built by First Solar, the project generates enough electricity to power 160,000 average California homes. Desert Sunlight received a federal loan of nearly $1.5 billion. Money provided by the project's owners ... is also being used to fund $400,000 in improvements to the community center in nearby Desert Center. Desert Sunlight is the world's largest solar power plant, although only by a hair. The Topaz solar project in San Luis Obispo County, Calif. — which, like Desert Sunlight, was built by Arizona-based First Solar — also has a capacity of 550 megawatts. But the desert has more abundant sunlight than San Luis Obispo County, so Desert Sunlight will actually generate more electricity than Topaz, said Georges Antoun, First Solar's chief operating officer. California as a whole has installed more renewable energy than any other state, noted David Hochschild, a member of the California Energy Commission. "There were a lot of skeptics who actually didn't believe that renewables could scale, that this cost reduction could happen, that we could introduce it to the grid," Hochschild said. "They've been proven wrong."
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The Vatican will offer homeless people in Rome not only showers but also haircuts and shaves when new facilities open next month, the head of Pope Francis' charity office said. The Vatican announced last year that it would provide shower facilities in St Peter's Square for homeless people. Bishop Konrad Krajewski told the Italian Catholic newspaper Avvenire on Thursday that it would also offer haircuts and shaves when the services start on Feb. 16 in an area under the colonnade of the square. Krajewski, whose official title is the pope's almoner, said barbers and hairdressers would volunteer their services on Mondays, the day their shops are traditionally closed in Italy. They had already donated chairs, hair-cutting instruments, and mirrors, the newspaper's website said. Krajewski came up with the idea of building showers in St. Peter's Square last year after a homeless person told him that while it was relatively easy to find places to eat at Rome charities, it was difficult to find places to wash. He immediately received the pope's backing for the shower project and then expanded it to include haircuts and shaves.
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Material things are unlikely to boost our happiness in a sustained or meaningful way. In fact, research suggests that materialistic people are less happy than their peers. They experience fewer positive emotions, are less satisfied with life, and suffer higher levels of anxiety, depression, and substance abuse. How can we avoid falling into the unhappiness trap of materialism? One answer has been emerging from social science: Cultivate a mindset of gratitude. In the early 1990s, researchers Marsha Richins and Scott Dawson developed the first scale to measure materialism rigorously. People who score high on Drs. Richins and Dawson’s scale score lower on just about every major scale that scientists use to measure happiness. Earlier this year, Jo-Ann Tsang of Baylor University and her colleagues surveyed 246 undergraduate students to measure their levels of materialism, life satisfaction and gratitude. Their results ... show that as materialism increased, feelings of gratitude and life satisfaction decreased. The relationship between materialism and gratitude can run in the opposite direction. A 2009 study led by Nathaniel Lambert, now of Brigham Young University, found that inducing gratitude in people caused a decrease in materialism. Dr. Lambert and his colleagues were able to increase gratitude in their participants by instructing them to focus on appreciating the good things they had been given in life, then write about what came to mind.
Note: The complete article presents several approaches to cultivating gratitude in everyday life. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
Ethical consumers in the United States are increasingly concerned with the seeds used in the production of their food. However, this has been an issue in Europe for many years. In fact, there are several transnational seed-saver networks, like Arche Noah, whose members have become experts on heritage seeds. One of the most famous groups within Arche Noah’s 8,000-member network is the “live” seed bank Peliti, which has been raising awareness about endangered varieties of heritage seeds since 1995. Once tiny, now Peliti is an NGO that receives thousands of visitors for its annual seed swap where you can get a mind-boggling number of seed varieties for free. It’s the biggest event of its kind in the world. They call themselves a “live seed bank” because traditional seed banks store seeds under refrigeration, sometimes for up 15 years, which is “more like a seed museum than a seed bank,” according to volunteer Vasso Kanellopoulou. Peliti concentrates on keeping their seeds reproducing [to prevent] genetic erosion. It is [part of] the larger global seed-saver network. Their organization has given birth to many satellite communities that are linked with one another via a Google Group. Panagiotis Sainatoudis, Peliti’s founder, says that one of the organization’s basic principles is “to support man’s freedom to keep his own seed so he won’t depend every year on seed purchase, commerce, not even on the seeds supplied by Peliti.”
Note: In the United States, industrial agriculture companies are using the USDA to antagonize local community seed sharing groups. Find out more here.
The rape by six men of the 23-year-old Delhi medical student who later died of her injuries sparked national protests and changes to India’s rape laws. For film-maker Ram Devineni, founder of the publisher and film production company Rattapallax, it also led to Priya’s Shakti, a new comic for teenagers which Rattapallax says is “rooted in ancient matriarchal traditions that have been displaced in modern representations of Hindu culture”, and which is intended to support “the movement against patriarchy, misogyny and indifference through love, creativity and solidarity”. Illustrated by Dan Goldman, the comic is about to be unveiled at Mumbai Comic-Con. It tells the story of Priya, devoted to the goddess Parvati, and as a young girl, full of dreams of becoming a teacher. But she is told by her father to stop going to school, and to stay home and take care of the house. As she grows up, she is the victim of increasing sexual violence, until she is raped - and then thrown out of the family home. Parvati is horrified to discover what women on earth go through, and inspires Priya to speak out and spread a new message to the world: to treat women with respect, educate all children, and speak out when a woman is being mistreated. Priya, riding on a tiger, returns to her village. She is, said Devineni, “a new hero for a modern India”. Priya’s Shakti – Shakti is “the female principle of divine energy” – is available free online, and Rattapallax has printed 6,000 copies in Hindi and English for the convention and for educational distribution.
Note: For more, read this inspiring article in the Christian Science Monitor.
In Xiaolin Zheng's version of the future, installing solar panels could be as simple as applying a sticker. “In China, the rooftops of many buildings are packed with solar energy devices,” says Zheng. “One day my father mentioned how great it would be if a building’s entire surface could be used for solar power, not just the roof, but also walls and windows.” An invention from Zheng's research team at Stanford University might someday make that possible. They have created a type of solar cell that is thin, flexible, and adhesive—a solar sticker. “Our new technique lets us treat the solar cells like a pizza,” explains Zheng. “When you bake pizza, you use a metal pan that can tolerate high temperatures. But when it’s time to distribute the pizza economically, it’s placed in a paper box." Working with her students, Zheng set out to fabricate solar cells on a silicone or glass surface as usual, but she inserted a metallic layer between the cell and the surface. After some trial and error, the team was finally able to peel away the metallic layer from the surface. The result was ... skinny, bendable cells [that] can produce the same amount of electricity as rigid ones. According to Zheng. “The silicon wafers come through the process clean and shiny. So just like a pizza pan, they can be used again and again, which translates to savings.” And because the solar stickers are lighter than conventional panels, they will be easier and less expensive to install.
Note: Watch a video of this amazing process at the link above. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
Nobody should die from diseases we know how to treat. Currently in all areas of the world over 50,000 people die daily from diseases we can treat. One component of getting good care in very poor places is to have the human capacity and training to deliver good care. Two UCSF Physicians have started a project called the HEAL initiative that aims to address health workforce in resource poor communities. HEAL initiative works at sites domestically and internationally, from Navajo Nation in New Mexico to Liberia and Haiti and India to both improve the quality of care, support and train local health professionals. The work that is about health care but is also beyond health care. It is about solidarity and justice. A simple home visit can shape the way anyone thinks about health. The community health workers sit with patients and discuss what ails them on many levels. When someone can't pay for medicines or health care, what other costs may be suffocating their budget? On arrival to the house, the family structure is revealed, how many people are staying under one roof, what material makes up that roof, straw or tin or concrete? Does the patient own his/her own land? Are there crops rising up from the soil or is the land barren? On one home visit we came across this grandmother (who) inspired this poem Towards Flooding Homes with Dignity. To witness this solidarity and movement towards health as a human right is to witness something precious becoming conferred as a right.
Note: The moving poem Towards Flooding Homes with Dignity is included in the complete article summarized above. Learn more about HEAL from this initiative's website.
In a recent experiment, a person in India said “hola” and “ciao” to three other people in France. Today, the Web, smartphones and international calling might make that not seem like an impressive feat, but it was. The greetings were not spoken, typed or texted. The communication in question happened between the brains of a set of study subjects, marking one of the first instances of brain-to-brain communication on record. The team, whose members come from Barcelona-based research institute Starlab, French firm Axilum Robotics and Harvard Medical School, published its findings earlier this month in the journal PLOS One. Study co-author Alvaro Pascual-Leone ... hopes this and forthcoming research in the field will one day provide a new communication pathway for patients who might not be able to speak. “We want to improve the ways people can communicate in the face of limitations — those who might not be able to speak or have sensory impairments,” he says. “Can we work around those limitations and communicate with another person or a computer?” Pascual-Leone’s experiment was successful — the correspondents neither spoke, nor typed, nor even looked at one another. But he freely concedes that the test was more a proof of concept than anything else, and the technique still has a long way to go. Brain-to-brain communication could find applications across many disciplines. At the same time, Pascual-Leone cautions that scientists must also keep in mind the ethics of telepathy.
Note: To learn more, see this infographic describing the process, and read another informative article exploring this fascinating topic.
"People try and run away from things and to forget, but with psychedelic drugs they're forced to confront and really look at themselves," explains Dr Robin Carhart-Harris, from Imperial College London. The drugs Carhart-Harris is referring to are hallucinogens such as magic mushrooms -- specifically the active chemical inside them, psilocybin. Carhart-Harris scanned the brains of 30 healthy volunteers after they had been injected with psilocybin and found the more primitive regions of the brain associated with emotional thinking became more active and the brain's "default mode network," associated with high-level thinking, self-consciousness and introspection, was disjointed and less active. "We know that a number of mental illnesses, such as OCD and depression, are associated with excessive connectivity of the brain, and the default mode network becomes over-connected," says David Nutt, professor of neuropsychopharmacology, who leads the Imperial College team. The over-connectivity Nutt describes causes depressed people to become locked into rumination and concentrate excessively on negative thoughts about themselves. Depression is estimated to affect more than 350 million people around the world. The current pharmaceutical approach to treatment is with selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs), such as Prozac. But SSRIs ... are generally prescribed for long periods of time to maintain their effect. Nutt thinks psilocybin could be a game-changer, used as part of a therapeutic package ... to treat people within just one or two doses of treatment.
Note: For more about the therapeutic uses of psychedelic drugs, see these concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles from reliable sources.
Below are two powerful graphs in “Health Abundance” I wanted to share this week. First is the massive reduction in smoking from 45 percent in the 1960s to 25 percent today. The bad news is that smoking is still the #1 preventable cause of death in the United States. Cigarette smoking causes more than 480,000 deaths each year in the United States. This is about one in five deaths. Smoking causes more deaths each year than all of these combined: HIV, alcohol, car accidents and guns. Second, is a look at the reduction of global malaria deaths, and the increase in funding allocated for research and development to cure malaria. As medical research continues and technology enables new breakthroughs, there will be a day when Malaria and most all major deadly diseases are eradicated on Earth. I hope you enjoyed this week’s Evidence of Abundance.
Note: See a great booklet filled with inspiring graphs showing how our world is gradually becoming ever more abundant.
James Doty is not a subject under study at the altruism research center that he founded at Stanford in 2008, but he could be. In 2000, after building a fortune as a neurosurgeon and biotech entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, he lost it all in the dotcom crash. His final asset was stock in a medical-device company he’d once run called Accuray. But it was stock he’d committed to a trust that would benefit the universities he’d attended and programs for AIDS, family, and global health. Doty was $3 million in the hole. Everyone told him to keep the stock for himself. He gave it away—all $30 million of it. In 2007, Accuray went public at a valuation of $1.3 billion. That generated hundreds of millions for Doty’s donees and zero for him. “I have no regrets,” he said. Doty [formed]—with a seed donation of $150,000 from the Dalai Lama, whom Doty had met in a chance encounter—the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education, or CCARE, part of Stanford’s School of Medicine. Many of its core findings mirror Doty’s own life. Emiliana Simon-Thomas, a neuroscientist, the science director of the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley, and former associate director of CCARE, sees Doty as a remarkable embodiment of what researchers are learning about altruism. “He rose to absurd riches and found that having every possible need met isn’t better,” she said. “That kind of question motivates him. He’s gone to the extremes of the pendulum, and he’s trying to find the place in between that will bring him the most rich and authentic sense of purpose.”
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Catching a glimpse of the Food Runners bicycle courier pulling a trailer fully loaded with trays of food might become something of a downtown San Francisco rite of passage. Food Runners, established by Mary Risley in 1987, takes food that would otherwise be thrown away and delivers it to needy people at Community Awareness & Treatment Services, A Woman's Place, Cityteam Ministries and Door Clinic, among many others. With the amount of donated food now coming in, Risley hopes to expand deliveries to after-school programs as well. A year ago, Risley estimates that Food Runners was picking up 10 tons of food a week; today, that number is up 50 percent, to 15 tons. There are about 100 new donors, and nearly all of them are tech companies - familiar names like Twitter, Zynga, LinkedIn, Uber, Google, Adobe and Airbnb, just to name a few, plus caterers like Cater2Me and ZeroCater that service small startups. "Millennials have found us," says Risley. "Anything you say about the Millennials being out of it is not true. Well, maybe they are out of it, but not when it comes to generosity." ZeroCater, which caters to eBay and FourSquare, among others, estimates that a company usually orders about one pound of food per person. Since the head count varies from day to day and extra food is always ordered, a good amount is left over. That is where Food Runners comes in. The company - be it caterer or restaurant - calls Food Runners. The food gets picked up and delivered the same day. Food Runners' No. 1 message to the public should be clear, says Risley: Don't throw food away.
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Pope Francis urged Asia's Catholic youth to renounce the materialism that afflicts much of their society today and reject "inhuman" economic systems that disenfranchise the poor. Francis, who received a boisterous welcome from tens of thousands of young people as he celebrated his first public Mass in South Korea, pressed his economic agenda in one of Asia's powerhouses where financial gain is a key barometer of success. In his homily, Francis urged the young people to be a force of renewal and hope for society. "May they combat the allure of a materialism that stifles authentic spiritual and cultural values and the spirit of unbridled competition which generates selfishness and strife," he said. "May they also reject inhuman economic models which create new forms of poverty and marginalise workers." Many link success with ostentatious displays of status and wealth. Competition among the young, especially for places at elite schools, starts as early as pre-nursery and is fierce. The country has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. Francis said that in such "outwardly affluent" societies, people often experience "inner sadness and emptiness. Upon how many of our young people has this despair taken its toll?". South Korean Catholics represent only about 10% of the country's 50 million people, but their numbers are growing. Once a country that welcomed missionaries, South Korea now sends homegrown priests and nuns abroad to help spread the faith.
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A startup that’s been called “a Kickstarter for the homeless,” HandUp Pbc, has raised $850,000 in seed funding, co-founder and Chief Executive Rose Broome told Venture Capital Dispatch. Unlike giving cash to needy people on the streets, HandUp helps donors give money to homeless people who commit to using it to fulfill specific needs like rent, security deposits, food or health bills. Homeless advocates, or case managers who work in shelters, post profiles on HandUp.us on behalf of the homeless, accept donations via HandUp, then ensure the money is spent on what that person said he or she needed. To generate revenue, HandUp asks donors to pay an optional “support fee” of five dollars each time they make a contribution. If a donor doesn’t opt-in to pay that fee, the entirety of what they donate goes to the homeless person in need. Most homeless people do not or cannot maintain an online bank account or consistent Internet access. So HandUp’s approach helps them get access to online fundraising when they wouldn’t otherwise have the option. It also has the effect of helping non-profits and shelters validate that their clients’ needs are being met fully, and with transparency for donors. With the seed funding, Ms. Broome says HandUp plans to grow its five-employee team, scale beyond San Francisco to help the homeless, and develop partnerships with shelters and non-profits.
Note: Watch an inspiring three-minute CNN video on this great program.
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